


You Got the Scars and the Stitches to Prove It

by cm (mumblemutter)



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Apocalypse, Community: kink_bingo, M/M, Post-Canon, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:48:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/pseuds/cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roque and Clay and also zombies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Got the Scars and the Stitches to Prove It

What happens is, there are zombies, and Max going, "Whups, guess that was an unexpected side effect of that little weapon of mass destruction. Guess it's not so much green then. Well technically, since the dead don't actually die, it's a conservation of -" and that's when Roque shoots him in the chest, because if the end of the world is here, he sure as fuck isn't going to spend it being Max-the-world-ender's buttboy.

Max doesn't see it coming. And then five minutes later Roque has to shoot him again, in the head this time. It's almost as satisfying as the first time, if he's being honest about it. He could do this once more, if need be.

But the head's the money shot, and now Roque has a shitload of weaponry, a pimped out humvee, an army of undead creatures waiting outside, and the only plan he can think of is: find Clay, and hope to Christ that a) the bastard isn't already dead and b) the bastard doesn't try to kill him.

A works out well. B not so much.

Behind said humvee, he's yelling, "You're not still mad about that whole thing, are you?"

A bullet whizzes past Roque's head, too close, and then Clay shouts, unnecessarily, "What do you think?"

"I think zombies, Clay. Stop wasting your ammo on me when you have a billion undead just waiting to eat you."

"At this point I'll take my chances with the meatheads rather than you." Another bullet. This one actually manages to clip Roque's ear. Son of a bitch. "You don't mean that."

Instead of an answer, there's silence, and by the time Roque thinks of raising himself to find out what the fuck's going on, a barrel is poking at his chest, and the owner of the rifle is tipping his hat at him and grinning darkly. "Hello, hombre." And then the world goes black.

+

Roque forgets, sometimes, why no one ever wanted to be on the opposite side of the Losers.

+

"I did in fact mean it," Clay says conversationally.

Roque clutches at his head and moans. "Then why am I not dead."

"I was outvoted. Me, I have a bullet engraved with your name on it. Made it special before all this started. Was looking forward to using it, too."

"Wait, how did you know I was alive to begin with?"

"Please."

"So who voted I live?"

"Do you really want to know that?" And that's Jensen, coming into the room. "I feel it would possibly hurt your feelings, maybe you'll have some simmering resentment towards the ones that voted we let the zombies eat you. Teams don't function well under this kind of atmosphere, Roque." He comes further into the room and drops easily into the chair next to Clay. "Not that, you know. You're part of the team anymore. You're just the bastard that betrayed us and left us to die. That was not cool, man. Not cool at all."

"Jensen," Clay says.

"What?"

"Nothing." He turns to Roque. "Up to me, I'd get to use that bullet right now. But some of us apparently feel you might have some use. Since it's basically us against a million of those fuckers. So congratulations, you get to live."

Roque puts his hand against his forehead. It comes away wet. "For what it's worth, right."

"Better than being dead," Clay responds grimly. "Or one of them."

There's a child peeking around the corner of the room. He recognizes her, family dinners and all that, back when he had a family to be a part of, but she's taller now, and he's surprised that he's relieved she made it. Max had told him to put all that 'caring about others' shit behind, and for the most part Roque had succeeded in doing so. Of course, the way Max put it, it was all about focusing on the big picture rather than the individual, and really they actually cared more than everyone else. Max, as usual, was full of shit, and Roque used to wonder how the hell Wade put up with him for so long. Possibly the money had something to do with it. Not that money means jack shit now.

"She grew tall," he tells Jensen, and Jensen nods his head.

"Yeah. She's still a little scared of you. On account of you being, well, you. I used to tell her, don't be scared of Uncle Roque, he's a softie at heart. Guess I was wrong about that, huh?"

+

Turns out everyone's here. Jensen, his sister and the kid, Cougar, Pooch and his entire family, and also Aisha. Shame, that. Roque had been vaguely hoping that some zombie son of a bitch had put her down. Then again, Aisha was Aisha, and the zombies probably ran away from her.

"Well, well," she says, when Roque stumbles out of the room they've got him in, desperate for a piss and the need to take in his surroundings, access the situation. She's sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, shotgun laid casually across her lap. "Look what the cat dragged in."

"You're not dead yet."

"No thanks to you," she replies, and he starts, because if she knew - then he realizes she's talking about what happened earlier, and he shrugs.

"We should just let bygones be bygones, right."

"Should we?"

"Yeah, I don't care. I gotta take a leak. Stay the fuck out of my way and we'll be fine."

"Down the hall, to the left. Don't get lost, don't make too much noise. They hear real well." Her eyes track him as he crosses the room, and he knows she's contemplating putting one in the back of his head. Knows she probably only doesn't because it would make too much of a boom. She could probably still take him hand-to-hand though, considering how busted up he is. Roque makes a mental note in his head: One vote _no_ from Aisha.

In the bathroom, he stares at his face for a while. Couldn't say that he doesn't resent Clay gouging his fucking eye out, but in retrospect, he probably deserved it. In retrospect, he probably might have regretted it if he'd won that particular fight. Probably. Mostly he wants not to think about it, else the rage starts to simmer again. His one good eye blinks slowly at him, silently agreeing to let bygones be bygones. At least for now. At least until the zombies go away. Which, hey, might not happen, ever, but Max liked to tell him to be optimistic: "I entirely fail to see why both you and Wade have such sour demeanors. It's as if the military sucked all the humor out of you while they were jamming that stick up your ass."

"Side effect," Roque replied.

"Side effect?"

"The lack of humor. Side effect of the stick. It hurts up there."

And that's when Max smiled, and clapped him on the back, and Roque thought: Fuck you, motherfucker. But you made your choice, and you stuck by it, is what he always believed. He stares at himself in the mirror for way too long, forgetting he has to piss, until someone starts knocking on the door. A sharp, demanding rap; he knows it's Clay even before he opens the door. "You checking up on me? What do you want, I gotta -"

"Yeah, Aisha told me. Just you've been in there a long time. You'll forgive me if I don't automatically extend my trust towards you after everything."

Roque looks away to the side, whistles silently through his teeth. "What the fuck, man. In case you hadn't noticed, the world's ending. I got no-one to betray you _to._ "

"Well that's reassuring. Tell me something, Roque. We your last option?"

"No," Roque says honestly. "You're my first." He puts his hand on the doorknob, leans some of his weight against the door and hopes Clay doesn't notice. But sometimes the pain just hits him, and there's nothing he can do but just ride it out.

Clay only looks him up and down, and in the end all he says is, "We'll see. Dinner's in a half an hour. You can join us if you want."

+

Dinner is, as Jensen would put it: awkward. Jolene slaps him, Cougar gets up and moves further away, and at some point the baby he assumes is Pooch's starts wailing and just won't quit. "I think he's affected by the negative energy in this room," Pooch says, with a pointed look in Roque's direction.

"Now, now," Jensen says. "I'm certain Roque is sorry. Roque, tell everyone how sorry you are."

The _fuck off before I cut you_ is right there, just waiting to burst out, but in the end Roque just swallows his tongue and mutters "I'm sorry," about as convincingly as he can. Which isn't very, to be honest, but he means it, mostly.

+

But when the world's ending, sometimes you just gotta put shit like betrayal and sending your people to be killed behind you. All hands needed on deck, and Roque, Roque's always been good at killing motherfuckers dead. Even motherfuckers that are already halfway there.

Besides, as Jensen reminds everyone, "At least he's got no-one to sell us out to anymore, do you, Roque."

Which makes a man feel all warm and fuzzy inside, just about.

+

So there's a zombie apocalypse, and they're mean fuckers too - Jensen complains that zombies aren't supposed to be able to run, "Romero set the standard, right," and Roque doesn't know what the fuck he's going on about.

Pooch shakes his head and says, "These are real zombies, Jensen. They set the standard."

And then they're off, and it is almost, almost like it used to be, until Aisha leans over the front seat and goes, "So how's Max doing," and all conversation stops.

"Dead," Roque replies shortly.

She nods, satisfied in some small way, and turns away. "It's a start, I guess."

And fuck it, he doesn't owe that bitch anything, but Clay's hand is on his arm and his eyes are hard and cold and Roque shakes him off, but he doesn't say nothing, just stalks off to the room that they put him in that's now his, more or less. He sits at a table and polishes his knives until at some point he looks up and says, "What do you want."

Clay's got his hand in his pocket and he's smiling that wry, faintly smug smile of his that always made Roque want to punch him in the face. Roque continues to stare at him as he reaches back, shuts the door behind him. "I see you've expanded your collection," Clay says, and he sits down on Roque's bed like he owns it.

"More things to kill." He hefts a freshly sharpened one, then puts it down. Repeats, "What do you want, Clay." But Clay's eyes are hooded and his smile is still smug but it's stretched a little, and Roque doesn't care, Clay's not his CO anymore, he grabs the bastard by the lapels of his shirt and drags him up so they're face to face. Clay lets him, sure, but that's not the point. That's not the fucking point. "What do you want."

"Fuck it, Roque. The world's ending. The world's ended." His smile fades away and his eyes turn dark. "Nothing matters anymore."

+

Fucking Clay always felt like fighting. Always. Now it feels like war. But: at one point, on his hands and knees, the world whites out because Clay clamps his fingers around his shoulder, and when he can breathe again Clay's staring at him, satisfied. "That hurt?"

"Yeah, some fucker blew up a plane I was in. Imagine that." Clay lays his hand, flat, on his shoulder, and Roque groans before he can help it. Bites down hard enough that he tastes blood. "I ain't useless, I can still -"

"Yeah," Clay says. "Allright."

+

In-between one place to the next, they set up camp. There's a fire to keep warm, but they gotta keep it low because the walkers get attracted to bright things, which means the fire doesn't do much and Roque's freezing his ass off. Pooch is on guard duty, so Jared is in Clay's lap, and Roque can't even bitch about Clay getting the insulated blanket because the last time he did that he had to hold the baby. So he drinks his beer and mentally makes a list of stuff that he wants to get on the next supply run they make. The lists keep him occupied, keep his brain quiet. He watches Aisha stalk the perimeter, doesn't miss the brief smile she flashes in Clay's direction before she turns to face the other direction, shotgun held at ready.

"So you still doing her or what?"

"Not in front of the kid." Clay sounds amused more than anything, which pisses Roque off.

"Whatever, man. You and those -"

"Oh, is this the part where you tell me you sold us out because I fucked some girl you didn't approve of?"

"Not in front of the kid." Roque pauses. "And it wasn't just this one girl."

Clay starts laughing, a low, honest chuckle. "You know, when all of this went down? Everyone was frantic. Trying their best to get to family. We had to split up, so we could save our own first. Even _that girl_ had someone she loved enough she'd steal a plane so she could fly back home, even though Afghanistan was burning by then. Me, I went with her because I thought of you and I thought, I hope that son of a bitch is finally dead. You couldn't even get that right."

"If you want me gone -"

"Shut up." Jared starts hiccuping, a sure sign he's about to turn on the waterworks and go into a fullblown wail. Clay holds him up to his chest and pats his back, whispers nonsense until he settles. "There's nothing left," he says finally. "Not out there. Or here. You wanna leave, I won't stop you."

+

The problem with a zombie apocalypse is that you don't really got much shit to do. They're in what used to be a military base, single exit, reinforced steel fence, Cougar in one of the towers taking potshots at the walkers whenever they get too close and set off the alarm Jensen rigged up. It really only gets interesting when they're getting ready to move on. When they're not Roque's got too much time think about shit that should have gone down differently, if only.

Laid up in the hospital after they pulled him out from the wreckage of the plane, Roque gave them a cover that got blown years ago. Figured at some point Clay or someone else in the unit would show up, put a bullet in his brain. Second degree burns across half his body and minus one eye, he couldn't bring himself to give an actual fuck. Half the time he stared out the hospital window, searching for a glimpse of a sniper's rifle, although he'd have liked to think Clay would come find him personally, maybe give a speech about betrayal and whatnot. Clay tended to get spiteful like that. Liked _closure_ , like saying goodbye face to face meant something. Instead, what he got was:

Max, bright and cheerful as a nuclear explosion, going, "I seem to be missing a wingman, Captain Roque."

+

They pack up, start to leave. "Cougar spotted some of them on the outskirts," Clay tells him grimly. "They're gathering."

Roque nods his head like he needs the lesson in zombie survival. How he'd stayed alive so long by himself was: keep moving, don't get too comfortable. Except now it's not just him he's got to take care of, they've got civilians too, and a fussy baby don't give a shit if there are things out to eat them, sometimes it just wants to wail, and Roque's starting to think maybe he'd been better off by himself after all.

Clay squeezes his elbow, though, says, "You okay, man?"

"Never been better," Roque replies, and maybe he means it, just a little.

**Author's Note:**

> For the **penance/punishment** square.


End file.
